Science: Brains in a Test Tube

The fastest, most intricate computer ever built is a primitive machine
compared with the human brain. One human brain cell, for example, may
be "wired" to as many as 60,000 other cells. In an effort to unravel
and understand the complexities of the brain, scientists in a number of
laboratories are literally reconstructing the living brain tissue of
lower animals in test tubes.

Pioneered by Biologists Aaron Moscona of the University of Chicago and
Malcolm Steinberg of Princeton, the technique is deceptively simple.
After taking tissue from the fetus of, say, an unborn mouse,
researchers coax the individual cells apart with the...